THE article
on the Hayward affair, which the Canterbury
University history department refused to publish,
ran in the Herald over two days this week.
It will have been read closely by everybody who
values academic freedom.
[Click
article
for pdf file of original Dr Fudge
article]

That freedom, it should be said at the outset,
is not quite the same as free speech. In a free
country people generally have a right to express
any view to the extent they are able, and suffer no
legal consequences unless they are unable to prove
a defamatory assertion about another person or a
company. Academic expression is not that free.

Academics work within the discipline of their
subject. To be awarded higher degrees and to have
their work published by their peers, they need be
familiar with others' scholarship in the subject,
acknowledge it and challenge it if they wish by
applying the principles and procedures of the
subject. Their conclusions cannot be mere flights
of imagination; they must be based on all available
evidence and rigorous reasoning.

Academic freedom means that their work ought to
be judged only on academic criteria and never
constrained by social, commercial or political
sensitivities. On the facts presented by historian
Thomas Fudge in the Herald this week,
Canterbury University appears to have surrendered
to some of those sensitivities in the Hayward
case.

Joel
Hayward (right) chose to assess the historical
veracity of "Holocaust denial" for his MA thesis.
He concluded, according to Fudge, that there was no
unimpeachable written evidence that Hitler
personally ordered the physical extermination of
Jews, that there was no way of confirming the
estimate of six million deaths and that gas
chambers were not used systematically for murder.
Except for those issues, Hayward did not deny the
historical event.

He was awarded his MA,
went on to do a PhD in a different area of
history and became a lecturer at Massey
University. The Holocaust does not seem to be
his abiding academic interest. Aware that the MA
thesis would be controversial, he had it
embargoed for three years. When it became
available the New Zealand Jewish Council said it
constituted "Holocaust denial" and demanded that
the university revoke Dr Hayward's
degree.

The university set up an inquiry by a retired
High Court judge and two professors of history.
They concluded the thesis was flawed but apparently
not enough to revoke the degree. They did not
believe the student was motivated by malice or
racism but they believed he
should not have ventured a
judgment in such a controversial area. That
last statement is the most troubling of the whole
saga as Fudge presents it.

It sounds like an admission by the committee of
inquiry, and by implication the university that
accepted the findings, that there are some subjects
too "controversial" for study, even by an honours
student under supervision. Historians must never
put historic events beyond critical examination.
All of history has to be open to constant
reappraisal of events, their causes and
consequences and the light they throw on the past
and present.

Fudge believes the Holocaust is not the only
taboo subject in this country. Academics here, he
wrote, "are often sensitive to public opinion and
political moods. They may actively discourage
graduate students from investigating certain
topics. There are other topics that ... are
sometimes subject to constraints on arguments that
may be employed, evidence that may be weighed and
conclusions reached".

There is a growing belief that the
Government-appointed Tertiary Education Commission
will threaten academic freedom. If there is another
threat, from within the university walls, the
future is bleak, not only for students but for all
New Zealanders.